Ars takes a look at the newly-announced web-based video remixing tool from …

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Yesterday, Adobe and Photobucket announced a partnership that will eventually allow millions of Photobucket users to make use of a new web-based video editing tool developed by Adobe to create their own "remixed" videos. The tool allows users to choose from their own library of uploaded images and videos to splice together—complete with captions, borders, and transitions—or select from any of the publicly-shared content available on Photobucket. The video remixer will be available for free to all Photobucket users in early March, but for now, the tool is available only in a limited beta to Photobucket Pro users. Ars sneaks a peek at the beta to find that it's a very simple, easy-to-use tool, but still has some issues that need to be worked out before public launch.

When a Photobucket Pro user logs into the service, he or she is greeted with the addition of a new button immediately above the library and below the upload box that says "Create Remix." The remixer is a Flash-based tool and requires all users to have the latest Flash plugin installed—version 9.0.28—on their browsers before proceeding. I installed this plugin on both of my browsers, Safari and Firefox for Mac, beforehand, but Photobucket did not agree.

Ultimately, I was unsuccessful in getting the video remixing tool to load on any Mac browser, despite having installed the latest Flash plugin. We can only assume that such browser compatibility problems will be fixed before the public launch of the service.

Under Windows, however, the tool was able to detect the Flash plugin under both IE and Firefox and loaded as expected. I was presented with the option of watching a very simple tutorial on how to use the remixer.

The tool would have been significantly more difficult to use without watching the tutorial, as the interface elements are large, easy-to-find, and self-explanatory. Library elements—both images and videos—load on the right side of the screen with the left side dedicated to the remixed video. The user can then drag-and-drop elements into the video timeline, with the ability to drag-and-drop any number of extras on top of my current section, such as frames or various captioning options.

Video clips can be trimmed or split in the remixing tool without affecting the original source, and an image can be dragged out to occupy nearly any stretch of time that the user desires. There's also the option to add in transitions between clips, although currently the tool only has three possible transitions: fade to black, fade to white, and fade out—which seems to be the same as fade to black. This is obviously a rather boring selection of transitions, and hopefully Photobucket and Adobe will add a few more before the product's official release. The selection of frames is rather cheesy as well, and anyone with a sense of dignity is not likely to use them. So that means that most of us can expect to receive video links from our family members with the gratuitous use of candy cane frames any day now.

Users can also add music to remixed videos, but not their own. When making my (rather bad) video, I was presented with 50 different songs from various artists, ranging from Alice Lee to The Orion Experience to Opus 7. Dragging the music clip anywhere onto my remix area placed it in the appropriate receptacle, which was nice, since I really didn't know or care at the time where that was. Dragging it out was equally simple.

Time to preview my remix! Users can preview their new creations at any point during the process without committing to saving it, which causes the background of the Flash-based app to blur and show a little pop-up preview in the foreground. During the previews of my two different remixes, the borders that I had dropped onto my movie were not displaying—probably a good thing, but those who like their borders will probably not be happy with that bug.

Once a masterpiece has been created, users can hit the "Publish" button, which processes the video for a few seconds and then brings the user to a new page to view the finished product. What's nice about this is that there is a button here that allows the user to go back and edit the remix if he or she so desires at a later date. My video was published without the cheesy borders here as well. From this page, users can then copy the URL to the movie for linking purposes, grab HTML embedding code for inclusion it on a web page or blog, or [img] code for forum use. The video is saved as a Flash SWF file to Photobucket's site, so users who want to save it as some other format are out of luck while using this tool. The remix also gets saved to the user's library for access later.

Overall, Photobucket's new video remixer is easy to use but only contains the simplest functionality that one could expect from web-based tools meant for the masses. Even desktop apps such as Apple's iMovie—once considered as simple as it could get—offer a lot more options than Photobucket in terms of editing capabilities, transitions, and other tools. That said, Photobucket's remixer does eliminate the need for any type of dedicated video editing software—or nearly any software at all, aside from a browser and a Flash plugin—making the process extremely simple for average users. Is this a feature that we expect many of Ars' readers to make use of? Probably not. But those we know and love might. Hopefully Photobucket and Adobe will get their browser/Flash detection worked out within the next couple of weeks so that the tools will be truly platform and browser agnostic upon launch. A few more of those ugly frames and transitions could help, too.

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Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui